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icarus_chained Jul. 11th, 2012 07:47 pm)
icarus_chained Jul. 11th, 2012 07:47 pm)Random side note, I need to pick shorter fic titles -_-; So. The weird little deaged-and-still-dangerous Avengers kidfic, Of Course You Realise, This Means War, The Annotated Version:
Of Course You Realise, This Means War (Annotated)
[Right. So, this was a prompt fic, and it was a prompt fic that I think the prompter wanted to be considerably more fluffy than it was. But ... the thing with kidfic is that ... I wanted them to be actual kids. And I wanted them to be the kids they'd been when they were actually kids (or, well, my version thereof). Because that adds a slant on a deaging fic, because if you suddenly have six ten-year olds who've no idea where they are or what's happened to them ... Um. That goes somewhere rather different than 'fluffy'. And it probably says something about me, that that was the slant I wanted to take -_-;]
[And the title is mostly because the prospect of a Helicarrier full of deaged Avengers initially made me think of nothing so much as Looney Tunes, and then that phrase in particular actually still fit. Heh]
Nick looked them over. Six terrified, defiant kids, none of them better than ten years old, standing on the Helicarrier's flight deck and glaring fiercely at everyone around them. Nick looked them over, and saw, had to see, the Avengers. As pure and identifiable as ever, despite the effects of the spell. [Quick note, before we get to the kids themselves: I like Nick. He's hardass, morally ambiguous at the best of times, and he's a dirty rotten liar who lies (PHIL), but he's ... He's a man doing a job, and trying to do it well, and trying to keep the bodycount to a minimum in the process. As Tony says, he's a master spy whose secrets have secrets, but he's trying to protect people, so I'll cut him some slack. *grins faintly* It helps that he's also frigging badass]
Rogers was out in front. Panting, asthmatic, clinging to Thor for support after the desperate flight up this far, he was standing out in front of the others, regardless of the fact that he was currently the smallest person there, determined to protect his people. [Good Lord, I want to cuddle Steve. Though, really, if his asthma is as bad as his backstory suggests, he's about dead, here. I'm surprised he's standing, Thor or no Thor. Heh. But he's out in front, because that's what Steve does. Ask Bucky]
Thor, beside him, undoubtedly the strongest and the proudest, though still pint-sized, had his arm around Roger's waist, and had carefully angled himself to shove Steve behind him if someone twitched wrong, whether Steve wanted him to or not. Nick strongly suspected that the only reason Thor hadn't done more damage than he had, during the chase, was because he had been half-carrying Steve the whole way. A protective older brother to the last. [As their ten year old selves, it's Natasha, Tony and Thor who've the best knowledge base for this situation, I suspect. Possibly Clint, too. And Thor ... he doesn't know where he is or who these people are, but he's figured out that he's a lot stronger than them, and they need his help. And he's a big brother to the last]
Behind the pair of them, in a small cluster, stood Barton, Banner, and Romanov.
Natasha was in a low crouch on the ground, her broken wrist tucked against her chest (and oh, whatever SHIELD agent had been stupid enough to cause that one was going to regret it), guarding their rear warily. Nick wasn't sure how much English she spoke, at this age, how much she understood what was going on, but she had been raised to be a spy, and it was showing in the slit-eyed glare she was casting about her, and the cold, desperate acceptance of the injury. Watching, Nick felt that old, weary thrill of fury. [In terms of WHAM lines, that line from Natasha to Bruce at the start of the movie ... Although, I suspect she probably does have some English, depending on how much training she's already had, but it's not her first language. And Nick ... that's a ten year old girl, with spy's eyes and a broken wrist, crouched in front of him. I guessing that pushes quite a few old, old buttons]
Clint and Bruce stood over her, a triangle facing outward, their postures, attitudes, weirdly mirrored. Narrow-eyed, defiant, unsure. Braced, both of them, with an identical cant to their shoulders, to accept a blow. Defiantly, desperately determined not to be moved from Natasha's side regardless. A pair of kids who knew exactly what violence felt like, standing up because they had no other choice, because someone else was injured more than them, and they could take it. [I've never read the comics. I know that both Clint and Bruce, though, have really abusive backgrounds in them, and given Bruce's anger issues and the job/lifestyle Clint ended up with, it's not that much of a stretch that their movieverse versions had similar issues]
And then, off to one side. Held captured with Phil's hand around his upper arm, Tony Stark. His casual, insouciant grin so much more unsure, on so small a face, the fear in his eyes so much more obvious, but the defiance unchanged. Stark had been captured before the others, taken before they were run down, and the first thing out of his mouth had been to inform the agents, or rather 'remind' them, of who his father was, what kind of money could be in it for them. And why they didn't really need the others, did they. All they needed was him. [Phil was late to the party. Which is probably why it was mismanaged so badly, and also why Phil is really pissed off right now. Not helped by the fact that I think he was the one who caught Tony, and he was the one Tony was desperately trying to bribe on behalf of the others, and he was the one who had to look down into the ten-year old face of a man he knows was/will be tortured once, a man who's his friend, and have that ten-year old face be scared of him. So. Phil is more than a little murderous, right now]
Nick wondered, absently, how the ten-year old Stark had convinced Rogers to leave him behind. Judging from the way Natasha's eyes kept sliding over to him, and the fierce, strangled flare of guilt in them, he was betting Stark had trumpeted the lessons Howard would have drilled into him, that he had kidnapping training (at ten years old), and that he was the least likely to be hurt, considering how much he was worth.
[I read a fic somewhere that had Tony be kidnapped a couple of times in his youth, and to be fair, given Howard's wealth, his career, and the fact that he was involved with any number of things (Manhattan project, for example) that would have made any number of groups pissed off with him, it would make sense for him to think Tony would need to be prepared. Howard in IM2 doesn't seem to have shied away from showing Tony his work, from IM1 it's obvious that Tony was up in the public eye since he built his first circuit board aged four. I'm guessing someone was paid, at some point, to sit him down and give him the basics.
Which is why he offered himself up. And which is why Natasha, who is ten years old, scared, and in what she thinks are enemy hands, felt she had to let him. Because she's been raised to see herself as expendable, and both her and Tony know that he's most likely not, so she's willing to let him take the hits. But she sort of hates it. And holy shit, Natasha's backstory is a nightmare, you know that?
I'm also oddly tempted to continue this just for the fallout between those two kids. The rich American boy who knows he's being used, and the Russian mini-spy who has to use him, and hates it. Heh.]
And somehow, in the time between them having been brought unconscious to the Helicarrier, considerably smaller than usual, and this desperate stand-off once they realised there was no escape, this tiny group of disparate children had woken, gauged their situation, formed an unlikely alliance, and made life a living hell for every agent on the carrier. [Seriously. They're young, terrified, theoretically helpless, but one of them, to reiterate, built his first circuit board at age four and probably has the best idea what's going on, one of them is an alien prince from a warrior culture who can punt a man through a wall, one of them is already a spy, two of them have enough experience of violence to know how to run, and one of them ... well, Steve's out of time and badly out of shape, but he's a good kid, and he's going to try to protect the others. So. I wouldn't want to be the one tasked with holding them]
Nick had seen the footage, from the med-bay. He'd seen Natasha, the first to wake, the first to understand, realise that she was captive, in English-speaking hands. Tony, after her, falling back on the training Howard, once he realised how many people might want to harm the child of a multi-millionaire weapons manufacturer, had reluctantly given him. Barton and Banner, bewildered but surprisingly (or not, given their files) willing to understand and be ready. Rogers, Thor, the last to understand, the first to try and defend their fellow captives. [Randomly, how bad must this seem to Natasha? She's in enemy hands, she's no idea how she got there, and I'm guessing whatever she was told would happen to her if the enemy ever caught her, it wasn't pretty. So.]
None of them with any memory beyond what their ten-year-old selves would have had, any physical changes from what they had been then. None of their later training, later power, later skills. Just Tony's almost preternatural gift for technology, Natasha's early training, and a certain all-round, base-level determination, each and every one of them. To escape, to find out what had happened to them. And, most of all, most importantly, to keep each other safe.
Oh yeah. Nick recognised them, alright. In six tiny faces, tilted defiantly towards him, in one cluster of terrified children crouched on his flight-deck, he saw the future, clear as day. [... Sometimes, it's really, really obvious that most of the reason the Avengers can do the things they can now is because they've been preparing all their lives, one way or another]
And every fucking one of his agents that had fucked this up, that had scared them, that had hurt them, was going to be facing him. He didn't give a flying fuck that Natasha had fought, that she had accepted a broken wrist as a necessary consequence of getting herself and the others out of there. He didn't give a crap that the electronic lock that could hold Stark wasn't going to be invented for another flat decade, at least. He didn't care that Thor, ten-years old or not, could punt a man through a wall, or that Clint could climb like a goddamn monkey and aim as well as ever. He didn't care that Banner had an instinct for running that would, years later, let him lose a crack military unit in Brazil. He didn't care that a panting, asthmatic Steven Rogers could out-last four SHIELD agents on pure determination, when motivated enough. He didn't give a flying fuck about any of that. [They're not badass, in the sense they will be later, barring Thor and Natasha. But they can damn sure make a run for it, and make it really, really hard to catch them again. Also? I think this comes under the heading of 'damage that didn't need to happen, and by gods someone's gonna pay for it', in Nick's head]
He cared that six bewildered, terrified ten-year olds had been taken back to what was supposed to be friendly territory, dealt with by people who were supposed to know how to handle them, and then hunted by a bunch of idiots who failed to realise that it didn't matter how young this group were, if you stupidly gave them reason to be afraid of you, they were going to fuck your shit up, no matter what it took. [They're his team, in many ways, and he went to bat for them against the Council, and more to the point they're currently children, and Nick is not putting up with this shit]
And he also cared that, if he didn't deal with those agents, if he wasn't the one to come down on them, Phil Coulson was going to quietly, and very calmly, murder every last one of them, and SHIELD didn't have the manpower right now to justify that kind of loss. [And Phil ... well. Clint and Natasha are his, Tony is his, he's working on Steve, Thor and Bruce, and someone hurt his kids. He's holding the terrified, ten-year old version of his friend by the arm, and having to be the bad guy to him, and someone's going to pay for that]
Damn it. He was getting way too old for this shit. Someone needed to reverse that fucking spell, and fast, or he wasn't going to have any damn teeth left, on account of having spent so much of the day grinding them into nubs.
"All right, ladies," he boomed out, stepping forward into the line of fire between SHIELD and the mini-Avengers, holding out his hands placatingly. "How about we take this from the top, and get it right this time." He smiled darkly, and watched half the agents there flinch, and Rogers raise a defiant fist. "And in case you were confused, that was an order." [And it's not even really the on-the-ground agents' fault. Once the kids got loose, they weren't going to be coralled again without some potential damage. This is a bad, bad day to be working for SHIELD, basically. Shit rolls downhill, boys and girls]
Fuck this shit. When he caught up with that damned sorceror, he was going to keelhaul the son of a bitch at thirty thousand feet, and forget to pull him up afterwards. [And randomly, I love the word 'keelhaul', and for some reason I think it'd be one Nick would know, but the actual concept of keelhauling? Really not pretty. And I suspect it's an honest-to-god threat, on Nick's part, too]
[*smiles faintly* So. Possibly it's just the mood I'm in, but this is what you get when you prompt me to kidfic. Heh. That said, the potential interactions between 10yr old Tony and Natasha in particular are ... Not to mention Clint and Bruce. Tony and Thor. Steve and Natasha ... Phil and all of the above ... *smiles, shakes head* Though it's Tony and Natasha I keep coming back to. Not sure why. *shrugs*
And anyway. Finis, yes?]
[Right. So, this was a prompt fic, and it was a prompt fic that I think the prompter wanted to be considerably more fluffy than it was. But ... the thing with kidfic is that ... I wanted them to be actual kids. And I wanted them to be the kids they'd been when they were actually kids (or, well, my version thereof). Because that adds a slant on a deaging fic, because if you suddenly have six ten-year olds who've no idea where they are or what's happened to them ... Um. That goes somewhere rather different than 'fluffy'. And it probably says something about me, that that was the slant I wanted to take -_-;]
[And the title is mostly because the prospect of a Helicarrier full of deaged Avengers initially made me think of nothing so much as Looney Tunes, and then that phrase in particular actually still fit. Heh]
Nick looked them over. Six terrified, defiant kids, none of them better than ten years old, standing on the Helicarrier's flight deck and glaring fiercely at everyone around them. Nick looked them over, and saw, had to see, the Avengers. As pure and identifiable as ever, despite the effects of the spell. [Quick note, before we get to the kids themselves: I like Nick. He's hardass, morally ambiguous at the best of times, and he's a dirty rotten liar who lies (PHIL), but he's ... He's a man doing a job, and trying to do it well, and trying to keep the bodycount to a minimum in the process. As Tony says, he's a master spy whose secrets have secrets, but he's trying to protect people, so I'll cut him some slack. *grins faintly* It helps that he's also frigging badass]
Rogers was out in front. Panting, asthmatic, clinging to Thor for support after the desperate flight up this far, he was standing out in front of the others, regardless of the fact that he was currently the smallest person there, determined to protect his people. [Good Lord, I want to cuddle Steve. Though, really, if his asthma is as bad as his backstory suggests, he's about dead, here. I'm surprised he's standing, Thor or no Thor. Heh. But he's out in front, because that's what Steve does. Ask Bucky]
Thor, beside him, undoubtedly the strongest and the proudest, though still pint-sized, had his arm around Roger's waist, and had carefully angled himself to shove Steve behind him if someone twitched wrong, whether Steve wanted him to or not. Nick strongly suspected that the only reason Thor hadn't done more damage than he had, during the chase, was because he had been half-carrying Steve the whole way. A protective older brother to the last. [As their ten year old selves, it's Natasha, Tony and Thor who've the best knowledge base for this situation, I suspect. Possibly Clint, too. And Thor ... he doesn't know where he is or who these people are, but he's figured out that he's a lot stronger than them, and they need his help. And he's a big brother to the last]
Behind the pair of them, in a small cluster, stood Barton, Banner, and Romanov.
Natasha was in a low crouch on the ground, her broken wrist tucked against her chest (and oh, whatever SHIELD agent had been stupid enough to cause that one was going to regret it), guarding their rear warily. Nick wasn't sure how much English she spoke, at this age, how much she understood what was going on, but she had been raised to be a spy, and it was showing in the slit-eyed glare she was casting about her, and the cold, desperate acceptance of the injury. Watching, Nick felt that old, weary thrill of fury. [In terms of WHAM lines, that line from Natasha to Bruce at the start of the movie ... Although, I suspect she probably does have some English, depending on how much training she's already had, but it's not her first language. And Nick ... that's a ten year old girl, with spy's eyes and a broken wrist, crouched in front of him. I guessing that pushes quite a few old, old buttons]
Clint and Bruce stood over her, a triangle facing outward, their postures, attitudes, weirdly mirrored. Narrow-eyed, defiant, unsure. Braced, both of them, with an identical cant to their shoulders, to accept a blow. Defiantly, desperately determined not to be moved from Natasha's side regardless. A pair of kids who knew exactly what violence felt like, standing up because they had no other choice, because someone else was injured more than them, and they could take it. [I've never read the comics. I know that both Clint and Bruce, though, have really abusive backgrounds in them, and given Bruce's anger issues and the job/lifestyle Clint ended up with, it's not that much of a stretch that their movieverse versions had similar issues]
And then, off to one side. Held captured with Phil's hand around his upper arm, Tony Stark. His casual, insouciant grin so much more unsure, on so small a face, the fear in his eyes so much more obvious, but the defiance unchanged. Stark had been captured before the others, taken before they were run down, and the first thing out of his mouth had been to inform the agents, or rather 'remind' them, of who his father was, what kind of money could be in it for them. And why they didn't really need the others, did they. All they needed was him. [Phil was late to the party. Which is probably why it was mismanaged so badly, and also why Phil is really pissed off right now. Not helped by the fact that I think he was the one who caught Tony, and he was the one Tony was desperately trying to bribe on behalf of the others, and he was the one who had to look down into the ten-year old face of a man he knows was/will be tortured once, a man who's his friend, and have that ten-year old face be scared of him. So. Phil is more than a little murderous, right now]
Nick wondered, absently, how the ten-year old Stark had convinced Rogers to leave him behind. Judging from the way Natasha's eyes kept sliding over to him, and the fierce, strangled flare of guilt in them, he was betting Stark had trumpeted the lessons Howard would have drilled into him, that he had kidnapping training (at ten years old), and that he was the least likely to be hurt, considering how much he was worth.
[I read a fic somewhere that had Tony be kidnapped a couple of times in his youth, and to be fair, given Howard's wealth, his career, and the fact that he was involved with any number of things (Manhattan project, for example) that would have made any number of groups pissed off with him, it would make sense for him to think Tony would need to be prepared. Howard in IM2 doesn't seem to have shied away from showing Tony his work, from IM1 it's obvious that Tony was up in the public eye since he built his first circuit board aged four. I'm guessing someone was paid, at some point, to sit him down and give him the basics.
Which is why he offered himself up. And which is why Natasha, who is ten years old, scared, and in what she thinks are enemy hands, felt she had to let him. Because she's been raised to see herself as expendable, and both her and Tony know that he's most likely not, so she's willing to let him take the hits. But she sort of hates it. And holy shit, Natasha's backstory is a nightmare, you know that?
I'm also oddly tempted to continue this just for the fallout between those two kids. The rich American boy who knows he's being used, and the Russian mini-spy who has to use him, and hates it. Heh.]
And somehow, in the time between them having been brought unconscious to the Helicarrier, considerably smaller than usual, and this desperate stand-off once they realised there was no escape, this tiny group of disparate children had woken, gauged their situation, formed an unlikely alliance, and made life a living hell for every agent on the carrier. [Seriously. They're young, terrified, theoretically helpless, but one of them, to reiterate, built his first circuit board at age four and probably has the best idea what's going on, one of them is an alien prince from a warrior culture who can punt a man through a wall, one of them is already a spy, two of them have enough experience of violence to know how to run, and one of them ... well, Steve's out of time and badly out of shape, but he's a good kid, and he's going to try to protect the others. So. I wouldn't want to be the one tasked with holding them]
Nick had seen the footage, from the med-bay. He'd seen Natasha, the first to wake, the first to understand, realise that she was captive, in English-speaking hands. Tony, after her, falling back on the training Howard, once he realised how many people might want to harm the child of a multi-millionaire weapons manufacturer, had reluctantly given him. Barton and Banner, bewildered but surprisingly (or not, given their files) willing to understand and be ready. Rogers, Thor, the last to understand, the first to try and defend their fellow captives. [Randomly, how bad must this seem to Natasha? She's in enemy hands, she's no idea how she got there, and I'm guessing whatever she was told would happen to her if the enemy ever caught her, it wasn't pretty. So.]
None of them with any memory beyond what their ten-year-old selves would have had, any physical changes from what they had been then. None of their later training, later power, later skills. Just Tony's almost preternatural gift for technology, Natasha's early training, and a certain all-round, base-level determination, each and every one of them. To escape, to find out what had happened to them. And, most of all, most importantly, to keep each other safe.
Oh yeah. Nick recognised them, alright. In six tiny faces, tilted defiantly towards him, in one cluster of terrified children crouched on his flight-deck, he saw the future, clear as day. [... Sometimes, it's really, really obvious that most of the reason the Avengers can do the things they can now is because they've been preparing all their lives, one way or another]
And every fucking one of his agents that had fucked this up, that had scared them, that had hurt them, was going to be facing him. He didn't give a flying fuck that Natasha had fought, that she had accepted a broken wrist as a necessary consequence of getting herself and the others out of there. He didn't give a crap that the electronic lock that could hold Stark wasn't going to be invented for another flat decade, at least. He didn't care that Thor, ten-years old or not, could punt a man through a wall, or that Clint could climb like a goddamn monkey and aim as well as ever. He didn't care that Banner had an instinct for running that would, years later, let him lose a crack military unit in Brazil. He didn't care that a panting, asthmatic Steven Rogers could out-last four SHIELD agents on pure determination, when motivated enough. He didn't give a flying fuck about any of that. [They're not badass, in the sense they will be later, barring Thor and Natasha. But they can damn sure make a run for it, and make it really, really hard to catch them again. Also? I think this comes under the heading of 'damage that didn't need to happen, and by gods someone's gonna pay for it', in Nick's head]
He cared that six bewildered, terrified ten-year olds had been taken back to what was supposed to be friendly territory, dealt with by people who were supposed to know how to handle them, and then hunted by a bunch of idiots who failed to realise that it didn't matter how young this group were, if you stupidly gave them reason to be afraid of you, they were going to fuck your shit up, no matter what it took. [They're his team, in many ways, and he went to bat for them against the Council, and more to the point they're currently children, and Nick is not putting up with this shit]
And he also cared that, if he didn't deal with those agents, if he wasn't the one to come down on them, Phil Coulson was going to quietly, and very calmly, murder every last one of them, and SHIELD didn't have the manpower right now to justify that kind of loss. [And Phil ... well. Clint and Natasha are his, Tony is his, he's working on Steve, Thor and Bruce, and someone hurt his kids. He's holding the terrified, ten-year old version of his friend by the arm, and having to be the bad guy to him, and someone's going to pay for that]
Damn it. He was getting way too old for this shit. Someone needed to reverse that fucking spell, and fast, or he wasn't going to have any damn teeth left, on account of having spent so much of the day grinding them into nubs.
"All right, ladies," he boomed out, stepping forward into the line of fire between SHIELD and the mini-Avengers, holding out his hands placatingly. "How about we take this from the top, and get it right this time." He smiled darkly, and watched half the agents there flinch, and Rogers raise a defiant fist. "And in case you were confused, that was an order." [And it's not even really the on-the-ground agents' fault. Once the kids got loose, they weren't going to be coralled again without some potential damage. This is a bad, bad day to be working for SHIELD, basically. Shit rolls downhill, boys and girls]
Fuck this shit. When he caught up with that damned sorceror, he was going to keelhaul the son of a bitch at thirty thousand feet, and forget to pull him up afterwards. [And randomly, I love the word 'keelhaul', and for some reason I think it'd be one Nick would know, but the actual concept of keelhauling? Really not pretty. And I suspect it's an honest-to-god threat, on Nick's part, too]
[*smiles faintly* So. Possibly it's just the mood I'm in, but this is what you get when you prompt me to kidfic. Heh. That said, the potential interactions between 10yr old Tony and Natasha in particular are ... Not to mention Clint and Bruce. Tony and Thor. Steve and Natasha ... Phil and all of the above ... *smiles, shakes head* Though it's Tony and Natasha I keep coming back to. Not sure why. *shrugs*
And anyway. Finis, yes?]
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